Narrow vote causes fury in Vienna where climate minister is threatened with legal action by coalition partners
The EU has passed a landmark law to protect nature after a knife-edge vote, ending a months-long deadlock among member states spooked by fierce protests from farmers.
But a last-minute change of heart by Austriaβs Green climate minister, whose vote is credited with saving the proposal, led to fury in Vienna, with the party of the chancellor, Karl Nehammer, announcing it would seek criminal charges against her for alleged abuse of power.
In early August 2023, a beekeeper near the port of Savannah, Georgia, noticed some odd activity around his hives. Something was hunting his honeybees. It was a flying insect bigger than a yellowjacket, mostly black with bright yellow legs. The creature would hover at the hive entrance, capture a honeybee in flight, and butcher it before darting off with the beeβs thorax, the meatiest bit.
βHeβd only been keeping bees since Marchβ¦ but he knew enough to know that something wasnβt right with this thing,β says Lewis Bartlett, an evolutionary ecologist and honeybee expert at the University of Georgia, who helped to investigate. Bartlett had seen these honeybee hunters before, during his PhD studies in England a decade earlier. The dreaded yellow-legged hornet had arrived in North America.
With origins in Afghanistan, eastern China, and Indonesia, the yellow-legged hornet, Vespa velutina, has expanded during the last two decades into South Korea, Japan, and Europe. When the hornet invades new territory, it preys on honeybees, bumblebees, and other vulnerable insects. One yellow-legged hornet can kill up to dozens of honeybees in a single day. It can decimate colonies through intimidation by deterring honeybees from foraging. βTheyβre not to be messed with,β says honeybee researcher Gard Otis, professor emeritus at the University of Guelph in Canada.
Responding to fears of a βhoneybee collapse,β 30 states have passed laws to protect the pollinators. But when they invaded my house, I learned that the honeybees didnβt need saving.